Keep the fear off the set

Do you remember the actor/director John Cusack? He of ‘High Fidelity’ and ‘Being John Malkovich’ fame? I recently heard about ‘The John Cusack Rule’. When asked in an interview how he saw his role as film producer, he said his main job was, ”To keep the set free from fear.” This ‘rule’ was offered to […]

Can we create conditions for transformation?

Apparently, I once taught a ‘Grade A’ lesson. I know this because it said so, on a slip of paper in the small, brown envelope that appeared in my staffroom pigeonhole following a UK school inspection (because that is how we received feedback in those days). I therefore assumed that my careful grouping of students […]

Transforming learning

This post originally appeared on the CORE Education blog (Feb 2016)] toka kāhuarau: (noun) metamorphic rock. Ko te toka kāhuarau: Ko te momo toka ka hua mai ina huri te hanga me te āhua o tētahi atu o ngā toka mā te pā mai o te wera me te pēhanga i roto i takanga o […]

Belonging starts in the brain

It’s not news that stories grab us emotionally and help anchor ideas in our minds more than lists of facts do. Anyone who has sat through interminable slides – or a powerful keynote – will know this. The ‘right brain’ movement has been around for a while and I enjoyed Daniel Pink’s A Whole New […]

What is digital fluency?

[This was originally posted on the CORE Education blog.] A recent announcement from Hon. Hekia Parata signalled that digital fluency will be a key focus for Ministry centrally-funded professional learning support in 2016 (PLD Changes will lift student achievement, 23 Sept. 2015). The value of growing digitally fluent learners was signalled in the Ministry report, […]

Students, computers and learning: 5 takeaways from that OECD report

It was with breathlessness more suited to the daily rag that the BBC ran the headline Computers ‘do not improve’ pupil results, says OECD while the Register yelled “Don’t bother buying computers for schools, says OECD report”, prompting an outpouring of reaction that, predictably, asserted the opposite. Still, we are sensible professionals who are quite capable […]

Transforming our learners’ experiences

“Leaders that sustain their transformation always remember the reason for the journey: Transformation leads to new ways of helping families to self-sufficiency. Transformation increases capacity to help communities” (Oftelie, 2014). Talking about ‘transformation’ can feel rather esoteric, vague and resonant of a hundred other buzz words of the moment. That said, what’s important is to […]

Got tech? Hear me roar!

It’s been a week or two of interesting stories related to school students harnessing social networks in order to make a point. We’ve had school speeches on the state of education and a plea for puffer jackets to name the most recent two. There has been reciprocal handwringing on the part of the press in response that has […]

Innovate from the outside in

In a local school near me, the staff has spent a couple of years iteratively redesigning the way they prepare students to change classes at the end of the year. It used to be a done deal, classes allocated by SMT and Deans, with families informed by letter in the last week of the school year. For some students, […]

Have you joined the tech revolution?

Governments, including here in New Zealand, frequently rely on OECD data to guide policy-making decisions. In recent years, that data has largely been from PISA (you can access the 2012 topline results for science, reading and maths here) and TALIS surveys. In the last few years, reliance on OECD data has come under scrutiny for being too narrow in its […]